Woman sues to force exposure of YouTube bullies

Give me names, Google

Common Topics

A business consultant is seeking a court order forcing Google to turn over the names of YouTube commentards who called her a whore and posted unauthorized videos of her.

Carla Franklin, a former model and actress and a 2008 graduate of Columbia Business School in New York, petitioned a state court to unmask the individuals she says impugned her sexual mores in anonymous accounts on a Columbia website. Someone also posted clips on YouTube that showed her in a small-budget independent movie. According toNYDailyNews.com, YouTube users “JoeBloom08,” “JimmyJean008” and “greyspector09” posted the allegedly malicious and untrue statements and video.

At time of writing, the account for JoeBloom08 was “closed” with no explanation. Those belonging to the other two users remained accessible, but they didn't make any videos available. Pages showing the offending video weren't immediately visible, either.

Google has long stated that it will not identify users without a valid court order. That's precisely what happened to Rosemary Port, the user of Google's Blogger.com service who posted comments besmirching the hygiene and sexual habits of Vogue cover model Liskula Cohen in a now-defunct column titled “Skanks in NYC.” ®